#25 - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

(dir. Marcus Nispel)

This is a really great example of how to do a remake well.  Rather than just updating the original film for modern audiences, this one takes the same basic premise (kids in a van meet psychotic family) and moves the plot in different directions.  It uses a lot of the same plot points, too, but in different and unexpected ways.  For example, they still pick up a hitchhiker at the beginning of the film, but instead of Leatherface's crazy brother, it's a girl who is clearly an escaped victim of the family.  The result is a movie that feels familiar on the surface, but which still keeps the audience guessing.

I was pretty surprised by how good this one was.  R. Lee Ermey as the psychotic Sheriff Hoyt is definitely the highlight of the film, but I thought that basically every element worked really well.  While this is naturally a violent and bloody film, most of the scares come from actual tension and not just gruesome gore.  The scene where Sheriff Hoyt forces Morgan to re-enact the girl's suicide is as tense and creepy as anything I've seen in a recent horror film.

I thought this was a worthy remake.  It clearly has a lot of love for the original, but isn't afraid to do its own thing.  Even though the original is definitely scarier, I'd argue that this one is probably the better film.  I hate pretty much all of the characters in the original film though, especially Franklin, so I'm a little biased.